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Norlingish
Norlingish (a.k.a Norling, Norð, Þå, Norlingisk, Häþisk, Språk) is a language originally designed to be an adaptation of Old English and German that quickly turned into an artificial natural language that is of North Germanic derivation. The name "Norling" was chosen before the language was developed, and the only starting premise was that it would be predominately Northern and Western Germanic. It started off as a dialect of Old English but quickly grew into a useful code-switching language due to its conservative use of diphthongs and the simplification of roots to allow for a more fluid agglutinative language. The grammatical and morphological nuances, however, were not developed with the lexicon, they were developed in practice. Classification and Dialects The language underwent a lot of changes during use, including the addition of new roots as well as morphological changes such as the eviction of the neutral and feminine genders, and the continued syncopation of some sounds. Through speech and writing the language was forced to grow and many words needed to be created so as to strictly avoid using roots from other languages. Most roots contain 3-4 letters and during it's creation, diphthongs and triphthongs were avoided at all costs, but as naturalization of the language occurred, natural diphthongs were required to make grammatical sense, namely kuhen, dehen, döer, and anything containing the letter "ê". In the paradigm of dialects, there are two: Standard Norling In standard spoken Norling some words are derived from English or Latin Roots, for instance åtto (car), film (movie), electrik (electricity) and pistol (firearm), to name a few. In formal speech, words derived from other languages are improper, so respectively these words are interchangeable with vagnur, flikkurskorg, brunstenström, and dustknakkur. Church Norling In written formal Norling, also known as Church Norling (used for liturgical purposes in an undisclosed religious society), there different writing conventions as well as morphological differences. One such difference is the use of a different infinitive case for verbs, '-a' instead of '-en'. Other examples include the fact that geminated consonants are not written, and derived roots are evaded. It is very disrespectful to speak in Standard Norling to a person of high rank. Examples The phrase "He never told us angrily "no running" when we went out of the house." varies only slightly between the two dialects. Standard Norling: Hir nikker täl ås hötteg "nul rynnen" kven vir vendt us fre hussem. Church Norling: Hir niker täl åss höteg "ryna ik" kven vir vendt us fre hussem. Phonology Consonants Vowels Phonotactics Depending on the speaker, the phonemes ɛ and e are typically interchangeable. Known diphthongs are: e͡ə in êg, œ͡y in öy, ʊ͡e in kuher, ɔ͡e in åer, and œ͡e in döer. There are two known triphthongs, œyə or œyeɾ in öyer, and eəʊ in frêur. There is one known quadraphthong, approximately oœyə, in Faroöyer, meaning the Faroe Islands. Writing System (*) Indicates a digraph and the phoneme it represents, not members of the alphabet proper. (**) The grapheme 's' indicates ʃ when it precedes a consonant (e.g. ʃt, ʃp, etc.), z when preceded by a voiced consonant (e.g. dz, bz), or when at the end of a word, and s almost everywhere else. The digraph "ss" at the end of the word forces s instead of z. Grammar Pronouns The pronoun system is as follows: There are four pronouns indicating location, kvar being an unknown location, har being one that is grammatically near, þvar being far, and ðar, which isn't demonstrative to location. Nouns Norlingish nouns are inflected for number and definiteness and can take a genitive suffix. They exhibit the following morpheme order: In the course of the language's creation, all nouns dropped the neuter ending ''-et'' in favor of the masculine/general ''-en'' and ''-em'', and only few words are still applicable to the feminine ''-an'' and ''-am''; and all of which are words that refer to feminine person (e.g. kvinnan, magdan, vantingan) Also, the distinction between strong and weak nouns was dropped, every noun is treated as Germanic weak nouns are (e.g. mann, manner; döer, döerer) There are two definite states in Norling, such that "kvarem" 'and'' ''"ðä kvar"'' bear the same meaning. | |} Verbs Strong Verbs There are four classes of strong verbs in Norlingish, requiring the final vowel of a verb root to undergo a change during conjugation into the past tense, as follows: o → ö (e.g. kommen → köm) e → ä (e.g. setten → sät) ä → o (e.g. bären → bor) i → u (e.g. finden → fund) Weak Verbs All weak verbs are uniformly conjugated. In the imperative tense, the verb is placed before the pronoun, (e.g hedden vir!; kommen jä!) Grammatical Disposition Depending on the grammatical disposition of the speaker as authoritative (being certain of a statement, or having proven it) or observant (speaking about something which has not been proven, but observed), the grammatical alignment of a statement will typically fall into the Nominative-Accusative or the Ergative-Absolutive alignment, respectively, as such: Observant: Hir niker täl åss höteg "ryna ik" kven vir vendt us fre husem. Authoritative: Hir ås höteg niker täl "ryna ik" kven vir vendt us fre husem. Also, the observant case is almost always used when the subject of a sentence or phrase is the speaker or the speaker is a representative of the group. Either manner of alignment has equal semantic value, but the certainty of the speaker will differ. Example Text "Kva 'n Stor Fäkkert Vast" by Lewis Johnson Þvar värt nikker Meðkviþ ik ig vilt liffen. Ål dîsser lit hygter Maggen så em knesk sund; Hedur ök em, Befor þer usgedden. Ål dîsser lit hygter, Þva makt met kver ig ar dendäg.'' Lexicon Numerals Cardinal numbers The cardinal numbers from zero to twelve in Norling are: The number 1 is the same as the indefinite article, (''en). The Norling numbers from 13 to 19 are: The numbers for multiples of ten from 20 to 1000 are: Higher numbers include: Rational numbers are read as the cardinal number of the numerator followed by the ordinal number of the denominator; is shown below: Ordinal numbers First to twelfth: Days of The Week Swadesh List Category:Languages